Police escort the accused in the sex racket in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Jan. 15: Cuttack-Bhubaneswar police busted a sex racket and arrested six persons, including two women, from an apartment in Sundarpada on the outskirts of the city late last night.

Acting on a tip-off, the Airfield police raided the first house on the sixth floor of Hi-Tech Plaza around 12.30am and arrested two women and four of their clients. Police also seized two cars from the spot.

The accused were identified as Shaik Tarafdar, Shaik Salman, Shaik Mangu and Kulamani Sahu. All the accused were in their 30s, while the women were around 25 years old.

Police said that while one of the arrested women was from Bengal, the other was from Balasore district. Both were staying in Saliasahi in Nayapalli police limits. The woman from Bengal was nabbed by Chandrasekharpur police in a sex racket case in that area in 2011.

Tarafdar is the son of a former superintendent of police and works as a builder in the area. Mangu and Sahu are employees of Tarafdar’s real estate company. Salman, Tarafdar’s friend, had arranged for the house. The police said Salman was staying in that house with a former vice-chairman of the notified area council of Jatani but the latter was not present during the raid.

The cops said they got information about the sex racket, following which a team of policemen in civil clothes raided the house.

After being taken to Airfield police station, the accused were sent to Capital Hospital for medical examination this morning. The police filed a case under several sections of the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act.

“After a medical examination was done, the accused were produced before court,” said inspector in-charge of Airfield police station G.S. Chakrabarthy.

The accused were sent to judicial custody after a local court rejected their bail pleas.

A police source said the builder had a successful business deal yesterday that assured him of around Rs 50 lakh, following which they called the women.